Thinking about networked thinking

In a world awash with data managers may have to start thinking about networked thinking

Big data takes our online, shopping and social media use it is the business challenge for our time

“We want to be the Wayze of enterprise software” is the line being repeated by executives at the Inforum2016 conference in New York today.

This is an interesting strategy for Infor, who provides a range of enterprise software tools to help companies track what is going on in their business, as Wayze is built upon aggregating user data to identify traffic problems to improve commuting times. It’s no surprise that Google bought the company a few years ago.

Infor position though is slightly different as it’s aggregating individual clients’ data for them. In a world where organisations are struggling not to be overwhelmed by information, Informa are in a good position, even if their executives do overdo it on the buzzwords.

Which leads us to another buzzphrase – design thinking – which has been drifting in and out of fashion over recent years. During the opening keynotes one of the comments was about the rise of  “network thinking.”

“Eighty percent of what most companies do deals with data from outside of their organisation,” says Kurt Cavano, Infor’s General Manager of their commerce cloud division. “We’ve seen in the power of networks with sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Wayze.”

“Nobody wants to be on a network but everyone’s on a network. It takes a long time to build but once you have one it’s magical. That’s what we’re thinking for business, they need to evolve.”

In one respect this is another take on the ecosystem idea, that one vital corporate asset in the connected world is an ecosystem of partners, suppliers and users, however the Infor view articulated by Cavano is much more about the flow of data rather than the goodwill of a community.

So we may well be entering a world of ‘networked thinking’ where thinking about the effects of data flows and being able to understand them – if not manage them – becomes a key executive skill.

Paul travelled to New York as a guest of Infor

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Author: Paul Wallbank

Paul Wallbank is a speaker and writer charting how technology is changing society and business. Paul has four regular technology advice radio programs on ABC, a weekly column on the smartcompany.com.au website and has published seven books.

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